Mummies

In December of 1896, a group of anatomists and anthropologists from Washington, D.C. traveled to a sideshow in Atlanta to examine a mummy known as the San Diego Giant, purportedly the ancient desiccated corpse of one of the tallest men… Read More ›

In 1896, Sir Wallis Budge, Keeper of the Egyptian Department at the British Museum at the turn of the 20th century, reportedly witnessed the exhumation of six mummies dated to the predynastic era, the period between the Neolithic and Dynastic periods… Read More ›

Ossuaries are buildings or containers where human skeletal remains are kept as way to reduce the space needed to store human remains. They are typically used in locales that need to re-use burial plots because space for graveyards is very… Read More ›

In 2003, a medical antiquities dealer sold an unusual item, a partial mummified body, to a private Canadian collector. This specimen only consisted of a partial skull, neck, and top of the torso, and measured 17.3 inches by 18.9 inches… Read More ›

The people of Norwich, CT celebrated the bi-centennial anniversary of their city’s settlement September 7th and 8th in 1859. To mark the occasion, the publishers of the local newspapers printed a hymn on brown paper to be sung during the… Read More ›

Corpse medicine was a type of remedy produced with the bones, organs, and blood from dead bodies. It is mentioned in ancient medical texts and histories from Greece, China, Mesopotamia, and India. One of the more peculiar accounts of corpse… Read More ›

Forensic analyses of two Egyptian mummies published in the British Medical Journal in 2012 may have answered questions scholars had about the outcome of an ancient conspiracy against Pharaoh Ramesses III and the identity of a contorted mummy believed to… Read More ›

A church in the small village of Kampehl in Brandenburg, Germany displays the mummified remains of a knight who died in the early 18th century. It’s not unusual for European churches to show the bodies and body parts of saints… Read More ›

In the 17th and 18th centuries, makers of osteological specimens built fanciful displays with skeletons standing in landscapes made with embalmed human organs, skeletons dangling hearts on a string like a yo-yo, or specimens playing instruments while sitting on a… Read More ›

The doll-like mummies of the Chinchurro culture are the oldest mummies in the world but have started to decompose at an alarming rate in the last ten years. Museum officials at the University of Tarapacá’s San Miguel de Azapa Museum… Read More ›